Roger Sullivan Blog

I have often thought about what it must have been like for early explorers setting foot on foreign soil for the first time.

In the case of the Pilgrims first encountering America on the shores of Cape Cod, I would imagine that profound gratitude at being alive to see the land after an arduous crossing lasting many weeks would have been the overwhelming emotion.  This would have been closely followed by acute anxiety about the coming winter months, the need for shelter, and lack of food and fresh water.  This was soon followed by fear about the Native Americans who were sensed more than seen until a skirmish ensued on First Encounter Beach.  It is important to note that the Pilgrims had pilfered the grain that the natives had gathered and stored after the harvest.  So, more than likely, the natives were justifiably angered that their early spring food stores had been stolen.

Consider other voyages and expeditions like Lewis and Clark, James Cook, Magellan, and Columbus.  What did they think when they arrived at their sought-after new land?  How did they communicate basic human needs?  How did they communicate more complex interactions like bartering for supplies, buying land, negotiating trade agreements between countries?

I would imagine that signing was extensively used in the early days.  However, as time went by, early entrepreneurs or opportunists who were linguistically inclined hired themselves out as interpreters.  Trust had to be a significant factor in these arrangements.  Each side of the transaction must have watched closely for any indication of double-dealing or less than accurate interpretation of the intended words.

During my schooling, I had a lot of formal and informal language training, having lived overseas in my younger years.  In order to get along with my elementary school peers in Germany, I had to quickly learn basic German if I wanted to participate at all in the local children's games.  Even younger still, I lived in Japan.  I believe that my love of the Orient was somehow imprinted on my impressionable mind and that simple phrases stuck in my mind's language memory banks.

Later, in high school, college, and in military service, languages came relatively easily to me.  In the U.S. Army, I was trained as a Thai linguist.  However, without continued exercise, the mind's language "muscles" atrophy pretty quickly.  This is especially true with tonal languages such as Thai, where the same sound (like "ma") can have five completely different meanings depending on whether it is pronounced with a low, medium, high, rising, or falling pitch.  To a Western ear, this is really hard to master.  Not a few of us in the class would confuse two particular pronunciations of "ma" -- one being "woman" and the other being "cow."  This would have the expected -- if unintended -- consequences with our female instructor.  Needless to say, she was not pleased with our clumsy progress.

Later, when I made the career transition to high technology, programming languages were my entry paths.  I spent my initial years with a low-level "macro" language used in programmable point-of-sale terminals.  It's been a long time since I did any computer coding, but my early spoken language training continues to serve me when I find myself  interacting with people from around the world.

Similarly, technical standards are analogous to the invaluable interpreters of early explorers.  Technical standards allow "foreign" applications, operating systems, and hardware to interact with one another.  Each element is valued for its own unique functionality that satisfies a need.  But, without a way of interchanging data and passing off functional responsibility to the next piece of the overall solution, these technical elements are simply a cacophony of competing proprietary interests.

Years ago, Oracle made a highly visible and public commitment to adhere to industry standards.  We further committed to supply our customers with products that are truly interoperable elements of comprehensive business solutions.  We committed that these elements would plug in cleanly through standard interfaces.  We did this primarily because it is what our customers want.  We also did this because it allows us to leverage acquired technologies more quickly and to assimilate them within our Oracle Fusion architecture, while at the same time allowing these products to interoperate cleanly with existing technical infrastructures within customer environments.

We have continued to follow through on that commitment, with last week's announcement of Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems.  This is a new offering within Oracle Identity Management, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. 

Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems is software that centralizes user management and authentication across major Linux and Unix flavors.  Traditionally, organizations have had to store and manage access and identity information locally on individual Linux or Unix servers throughout their enterprise.  With Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems, IT managers can now centralize this information in a single corporate directory resulting in improved management while end users can use their single sign-on login to access enterprise applications as well as Linux or Unix servers.

Organizations with Unix or Linux servers can benefit from Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems by being able to easily enforce consistent security and compliance policies across these systems.  For example, administrators and auditors can now centrally disable accounts or more easily report orphaned accounts, which helps ensure that administrator access is compliant with organizational policies.

Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems, part of the Oracle Directory Services offering, is based on open standards and includes the following features and complementary directory components:

• Tight integration with Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) on Unix and Linux operating systems, including Oracle Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Sun Solaris, IBM AIX and HPUX.
  
• Tools and scripts to configure both PAM and Oracle Internet Directory components for a simplified migration and native security between network endpoints. 
  
• Oracle Internet Directory, built on the Oracle Database, which securely stores and distributes data pertaining to users, groups, roles and entitlements across the enterprise.
  
• Oracle Virtual Directory, which accesses identity information contained in several identity sources and presents it to the application as a single data source.
  
• Strong and flexible password policy support that helps ensure users are selecting stronger passwords and changing them regularly.

Just as in the days of early world explorers, today's global business experience is "multi-lingual." To be successful, vendors must provide customers with products that operate in an ever-evolving heterogeneous environment.  This environment has a diverse range of products from a vast array of vendors.  If our solutions plug into this environment cleanly and perform well, then we will have earned our customers' confidence and will earn the privilege of providing additional products and services.

On an on-going basis, Oracle invests considerable effort and resources into global standards bodies.  We incorporate this out-bound activity into our core internal software development in order to produce the highest quality and most flexible solutions.  We are pleased to offer Oracle Authentication Services for Operating Systems as the latest example of this on-going commitment.